Eight hundred Iranian activists including political prisoners on Friday condemned as a "tool of repression" a steep uptick in Tehran's use of the death penalty after rights groups reported 280 hangings in Iran in October alone.
In a joint statement, the civil, cultural and political activists of diverse affiliations denounced the Islamic Republic for “turning executions into a tool of control and repression with unprecedented intensity."
Twenty-eight inmates were executed nationwide on October 22, bringing the total number of executions that month to 280, the Iran Human Rights Society wrote on Wednesday.
The group called October “the bloodiest month for prisoners since the mass executions of 1988.” The deaths, it said, mostly linked to drug offenses or murder, included several Afghan nationals and were sometimes carried out without notifying families or allowing final visits.
The statement on Friday, signed by several political prisoners, described the wave of executions, particularly in Ghezel Hesar Prison west of Tehran, as evidence of the “moral and legal collapse of the judiciary and its blatant disregard for human dignity.”
The signatories praised the more than year-long Tuesdays Against Executions campaign launched by Ghezel Hesar political prisoners, calling it a spontaneous act of resistance in which inmates “protest every week through hunger strikes against the culture of death.”
Amnesty International on October 16 urged an immediate halt to executions, saying more than 1,000 had been recorded so far in 2025, many following unfair trials aimed at silencing dissent and persecuting minorities.
“UN Member States must confront the Iranian authorities’ shocking execution spree with the urgency it demands. More than 1,000 people have already been executed in Iran since the beginning of 2025 -- an average of four a day,” Amnesty said.
Shargh described familiar scenes at public hangings: spectators arriving hours early, jostling for a view, with teenagers and children in tow as a crane and rope are readied.
The report cited legal experts and psychologists as saying that public hangings, though permitted under certain judicial conditions, risk normalizing violence and inflicting long-term psychological harm, particularly on young observers.
The practice declined to zero in 2021 before returning from 2022, with Fars, Khorasan and Kermanshah provinces accounting for the largest share, and smaller numbers in cities including Yasuj, Arak, Ahvaz, Marvdasht and Isfahan, the newspaper reported.
Many events occurred in provincial centers with large populations or cases that drew unusual media attention, the newspaper added.
“Public executions can have broad negative effects on society. They are not deterrents and instead strengthen violent behavior while harming the mental health of children and adolescents,” lawyer Abdolsamad Khorramshahi told the daily.
Under Iran’s judicial principles, executions should ordinarily be conducted out of public view, Khorramshahi noted.
“Article 4 of the Islamic Penal Code allows a public execution only in specific circumstances, when the executing prosecutor proposes it and the prosecutor general approves.”
Repeated exposure to violence in public desensitizes society and fosters imitation, social psychiatrist Amirhossein Jalali Nadoushan told Shargh.
“When violence becomes a spectacle, it seeps into families and daily life,” Jalali said. Public executions can stir what he called “collective anger” -- repressed frustration that surfaces when citizens lack lawful ways to express grievances.
Deterrence needs equity, not spectacle
Severe penalties have not curbed crime despite heavy sentences for drug traffickers, murderers and thieves, jurist and former Central Bar Association chief Ali Najafi Tavana told the daily.
“No country has managed to control delinquency through executions or corporal punishment.”
Punishment, according to him, only works within a framework grounded in meeting basic needs -- work, housing, social security and psychological calm -- and in visible fairness. When poverty, corruption and discrimination persist and elites flaunt privilege, fear of punishment erodes, he added.
Shargh also cited two public executions in July and August -- one in Larestan and one in Golestan -- where onlookers applauded and whistled at the conclusion, stressing the paper’s finding that the display does not reduce violent crime.
Iran’s execution rate surges in 2025
Twenty-eight inmates were executed nationwide on October 22, bringing the total number of executions that month to 280, the Iran Human Rights Society wrote on Wednesday.
The group called October “the bloodiest month for prisoners since the mass executions of 1988.” The deaths, it said, mostly linked to drug offenses or murder, included several Afghan nationals and were sometimes carried out without notifying families or allowing final visits.
Amnesty International on October 16 also urged an immediate halt to executions, saying more than 1,000 had been recorded so far in 2025, many following unfair trials aimed at silencing dissent and persecuting minorities.
“UN Member States must confront the Iranian authorities’ shocking execution spree with the urgency it demands. More than 1,000 people have already been executed in Iran since the beginning of 2025 -- an average of four a day,” Amnesty said.
Hengaw said Javad Naeimi, a resident of Qom and a specialist working at the Natanz site, was hanged at dawn on October 18 in Qom Central Prison “under conditions of total secrecy.”
Iranian state media had earlier reported the execution of an unnamed man for espionage for Israel but did not identify him.
The rights group said Naeimi had been arrested by security forces in February 2024 and sentenced to death after what it described as an opaque judicial process.
It said he was subjected to torture and coerced confessions during interrogation, citing a pattern of forced admissions in Iranian espionage cases.
Iran’s judiciary has not commented publicly on the latest claims.
Earlier reports by the judiciary-linked Mizan news agency said the executed man had “admitted to communicating with Israeli intelligence for personal and professional reasons.”
Hengaw said Naeimi’s burial took place under heavy security at Qom’s Behesht-e Masoumeh cemetery on October 21, and that his family had been warned not to speak publicly about the case.
The execution comes amid an intensified crackdown on alleged Israeli-linked espionage cases following Israel’s June strikes on Iranian nuclear sites.
In August, Tehran executed another scientist, Rouzbeh Vadi, for allegedly passing classified information to Mossad, while in September and October several other men were hanged on similar charges.
Last month, the UN special rapporteur on human rights in Iran said the country had executed 11 individuals on espionage charges this year, with at least nine carried out after Israel's military strike on Iran on June 13. Saturday's execution brings the total to at least 12.
Rights groups, including Amnesty International and Iran Human Rights, have condemned the surge in executions, saying trials for alleged espionage often fail to meet international standards of due process.
Tehran maintains that it is acting within its laws to counter what it calls “organized intelligence infiltration” targeting its nuclear and defense programs.
